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(1889–1963)

An American climatologist who devised the system of climate classification that bears his name. Thornthwaite taught on the faculties of the Universities of Oklahoma (1927–43) and Maryland (1940–46), and at Johns Hopkins University (1946–55) before becoming director of the Laboratory of Climatology at Centerton, New Jersey, and professor of climatology at Drexel Institute of Technology, Philadelphia. He was president of the Section of Meteorology of the American Geophysical Union from 1941 to 1944 and in 1951 he was elected president of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization.